Kalya Jagannath Rao | |
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| Born | (1940-12-07)7 December 1940 (age 84) |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Alma mater | |
| Known for | Studies on Nanomaterials, Amorphous Materials, Ceramics |
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| Scientific career | |
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Kalya Jagannath Rao (born 7 December 1940), popularly known asK. J. Rao, is an Indian physical chemist and an Emeritus professor at theIndian Institute of Science.[1] He is known for his researches on nanomaterials, amorphous Materials and ceramics[2] and is an elected fellow of theIndian National Science Academy,[3]National Academy of Sciences, India,[4] International Academy of Ceramics, Asia Pacific Academy of Materials and World Innovation Foundation and theIndian Academy of Sciences.[5] TheCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him theShanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1984, for his contributions to chemical sciences.[6] He is also a recipient of theOrdre des Palmes Académiques of the Government of France.[7]
Jagannatha Rao, born on 7 December 1940 to Kalya Ananthamurthy and Nagamma at Kalya, a village in the south Indian state ofKarnataka, passed BSc hons in 1960 from theUniversity of Mysore and followed it up with MSc in physical chemistry from the same university in 1961.[8] The same year, he joinedNational College, Bangalore as a lecturer at their chemistry department and worked there until 1964 before enrolling atIIT Kanpur for his doctoral studies under the guidance of renowned chemist,C. N. R. Rao, aBharat Ratna laureate. He secured a PhD in 1967 and continued his post-doctoral studies under the same mentor until 1972. Moving to the US, he also worked under C. A. Angell atPurdue University and with A. R. Cooper atCase Western Reserve University. Returning to India in 1972, he joinedNational Aerospace Laboratories where he worked until 1978 when he became associated with theIndian Institute of Science as a professor at the Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit. He worked at the Unit until his superannuation and post-retirement, serves as an Emeritus professor and Ramanna Senior fellow there.[1]
Rao is married to Sudha and the couple has a child Named As Kalya Vijaya Sarathy. The family lives inBengaluru.
Rao has been a part of several research groups; he collaborated with V. C. Veeranna Gowda and C. Narayana Reddy ofBangalore University for his studies of glasses and ceramics, with S. A. Shivashankar of Indian Institute of Science for studies of zinc oxidenanostructures and with A. Naik ofKuvempu University for investigatingnanomaterials.[9] His researches on ceramics and glasses are reported to have returned a new structural model for ionic glasses and a model for glass transition.[10] He discovered energy efficient protocols for the preparation of many advanced ceramics.[3] He has released his researches as four books which includeStructural Chemistry of Glasses, a comprehensive text on glasses[11] andCurrent Trends in the Science and Technology of Glass[12] as well as 290 articles published in peer-reviewed journals.[13][14][note 1] His work has been cited by many authors[note 2] and he has mentored 24 doctoral and one post graduate student in their studies. He served as the chair of the Materials Research Centre of IISc during 1984–91 and headed the Division of Chemical Sciences from 1992 to 1997. He is one of the founders of the Indo-French Laboratory for Solid State Chemistry (IFLaSC) at IISc which would later earn him a French state honor.[3]
TheCouncil of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded Rao theShanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1984.[15] He received the S. R. Palt Award of theIndian Association for the Cultivation of Science in 1993 and the Material Science Award of the Material Science Society of India (MRSI) in 1995; MRSI would honor him again in 2002 with the Distinguished Materials Scientist of the Year award.[3] The Indian National Science Academy awarded him the Materials Science Prize in 1999 and he received two awards in 2000, the Alumni Award for Excellence in Research of the Indian Institute of Science and the gold medal for Research of theUniversity of Bordeaux I.[16] The Silver Medal of the Chemical Research Society of India reached him in 2002[17] and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award and Gold Medal ofInternational Symposium on Circuits and Systems in 2005. He is a recipient of two state honors; theOrdre des Palmes Académiques of the Government of France (2006)[7] and Sir M. Visweswaraiah Award of the Government of Karnataka (2007).[18] He is an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences,[5] National Academy of Sciences, India[4] and a fellow of the International Academy of Ceramics, Asia Pacific Academy of Materials and World Innovation Foundation. He is also a recipient of honorary doctorates from the Indian Institute of Science (1988) and theUniversity of Bordeaux 1 (2000).[3]
